


Palliation Station

by Girl_chama



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Beer, Comfort, Drinking, F/M, Gen, New Friends, Pining, Prequel, Protection, Sharing, bouncing quarters off of anatomy, chance encounters, clout, mentions of disney
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Girl_chama/pseuds/Girl_chama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Problems with your tall, dark, and credentialed?”</p><p>Aliens and Aether are old hat to only a few on Earth, so it makes sense that their paths would eventually cross.  They are, after all, in it for the people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palliation Station

They were an excellently matched pair, if she did say so herself. Or think so, herself. She was too interested in watching their quiet conversation to speak aloud, though her dwindling beer was chipping away at her restraint.

He was tall and dark and she was kind of tall and… also kind of… tan. Maybe she wasn’t so tall, but most people looked a little taller from Darcy’s vantage point. Then again they were sitting, so maybe neither were that tall, really.

Damn, her drink was going fast.

And what was it with maybe-tall, really good-looking people and their chemistry? Obviously it wasn’t just firm asses and perky breasts. Unfortunately, for herself. But seriously? If all the romantic problems in the world could be solved by a nice pair of abs and some intense blue eyes, she would be pretty awesome. And not in Ireland. 

The parallel between the familiar and the tension exuded by the strangers in front of her only reinforced her attention on them. Her head followed the man’s motions as he stood and departed, his eyes casting over his shoulder to her and her conspicuous staring for a moment before back to his companion. He nodded and then disappeared through the door, back into the hotel. 

Not so much as a pensive, turn-back-one-more time for the pretty girl he had abandoned. Abandoned, damn it! 

Darcy grimaced and took another long swallow off of her Guinness, its head nearing the bottom of the cooler. The young woman left sitting took a nearly identical draw of her lager, stoically keeping her on the dark wood of the bar. 

Darcy sighed, feeling for her, but she was also maybe a little glad that she wasn’t the only spurned lover in this one-horse town. Or something. Did Dublin even allow horses in the city limits? She imagined she had seen carriage rides somewhere. Or maybe that had been earlier in the afternoon in Greenwich when she had written a note to Jane and Erik (and not to the intern or ANYone else) that she was taking the first cheap flight out of London for some R and R. She had done the same thing after Puente Antiguo when a weekend trip to Santa Fe had been in order. Something anchoring and terrestrial and not from the depths of the universe or trying to kill her. 

So she was pretty sure Jane would not worry. Even though sticky notes were notoriously unsticky at times, and tended to fall off if not pressed hard enough. And she couldn’t quite remember where she had pressed it now that her head was getting pleasantly foggy. 

Hence, Ireland. 

Ireland was close. Ireland had beer. Ireland was not at the corner of Asgard and Dark Elves, nor did it have studly blond men shooting her curious, disapproving looks any time she opened her mouth. 

Darcy shook her head slowly before she caught the bartender’s eye and waved two fingers at her nearly empty glass. With one hand around the cup and one hand on the bar, she scooted her way down towards the bereft young woman.

 

* * *

 

It was resignation that stopped her from following Ward, from pushing just a bit harder than she had already tried. It was enough that he wasn’t glowering at her or the rest of the team after his three-day binge of a magic and rage cocktail. She wanted to be his shoulder, a safe place to vent frustration and pain, but if he wasn’t ready he wasn’t ready, and she could respect that. Or so she was telling herself. 

She knew she was more open than most people; she was committed to truth and its proliferation and the idea that truth could bring people together, not tear them down. She was also learning that there were some things kept secret for a reason. Being with SHIELD had allowed her to experience as much, and Ward bought into the idea more than most. 

That realization, that truth, was a cold comfort, even if he had smiled at her on his way out, which was more than he had ever offered before. He had still walked out. 

Was he still angry? Was he just really good at hiding it? Was he able to hide it? 

She shook her head. As much as he had controlled it when it had been under his skin, he had not been able to hide the berserker’s effects. Hell, her S.O. didn’t hide his annoyance most of the time with her when circumstances weren’t so dire. And in a bar? Away from the team? He had nothing to hide. 

Maybe he was just too mistrusting of her to confide what had finally bubbled up from beneath his restraint and suppression. She sighed to herself, freely admitting that it would be her own fault if that were the case. After Wyatt. After dipping her toes back into the Rising Tide. He didn’t keep secrets buried so tightly to give them away to someone on a leash… 

“Problems with tall, dark, and credentialed?” a new voice asked and she looked up swiftly, too consumed in her own thoughts to notice the brunette approaching. She was wearing a beanie and an easy smile, and when she waved a loose finger in Skye’s direction the bartender set down a beer in front of her. 

“Uh,” Skye said, eyes glancing left and right. She was mulling the particular greeting over when she finally replied, “Hi? Who are you?” 

The young woman was hitching her behind onto the seat Ward had just vacated when she answered flatly, “A lovely, scholarly, jilted, and slightly astigmatic…” She waved her hand and Skye waited for the noun that the astigmatic girl was wincing to find, “Darcy?” 

“Uh huh,” she tried, slightly amused beneath her cautious demeanor, “You’re American.” Darcy lifted her pointer finger approvingly. “And how much have you had to drink tonight, Darcy?” 

“The answer’s at the bottom of my next glass,” she said as she finished her black beer. Their server dutifully placed another in front of her, a darker cousin to Skye’s lager. “I saw someone in a situation a little like mine and thought I might offer the opportunity to commiserate. …Commensurate? …Communist? Marx?” 

“No, the first one was right,” Skye offered generously, wishing to cut Darcy off before she could hit her stride, and the words stuttered to a stop. She wasn’t that drunk, if her reaction time was to be believed. 

Darcy’s face was open, though, patiently waiting for a new line of thought beyond affirmation and Skye huffed a laugh. Why not? The girl was half-drunk already and her Americanisms were overriding some of Skye’s homesickness. She obviously was not a threat, and there was nothing about her related to SHIELD or the Bus or secrets. 

“Why the hell not?” she asked, grabbing the free beer. 

“Hell yeah!” Darcy crowed and Skye met her daintily extended beer glass with more enthusiasm than she knew she could muster. 

Their glasses clinked and the game was on.

  

* * *

 

“And then the guy, that guy you just saw walk out says, ‘Gramsie!’ and starts boohooing like a big man-child!” 

Darcy chuckled while Skye practically cackled as she recounted one of the first times she had met Ward, her face contorting between twisted empathy and humor in a few seconds. It was probably one of those stories you would have had to have been there for, but everything was always a little funnier when libations were flowing. 

After listening to Skye talk past the bottom of the hour, Darcy realized that their situations were not entirely similar after all. Skye was worried about a friend, and Darcy was pining after someone who wanted nothing to do with her. It certainly didn’t stop her from appreciating company that wasn’t worried about Aether and Myuh-Myuh and cosmic booty. She snorted into her drink, and Skye grinned with misunderstanding. 

“Yeah good times. Better times.” Another long drag from her drink and Darcy waited as Skye explained, “Our group has some trust issues.” Her fingers fidgeted over the glass and Darcy pushed her spectacles farther up her nose. 

“But is it your group or the situation?” she prodded, matching Skye drink for drink. “Stuff happens. Circumstances and all.” She resisted the urge to belch, but there was definitely some gassy stuff going on. But what always helped gas was fried food. She made a note to order fries. Chips. Whatever. 

“The team is the situation,” Skye insisted, and while Darcy noted the different noun, she was too loose in the head to make note of it, and too empathetic to try. “Everything else is gravy.” 

“Ugh, hear hear,” she agreed, clinking her glass to Skye’s, and both girls drank. 

A moment later when Skye brushed the foamy mustache off of her lip, using her napkin no less, she admitted, “But I’m pretty sure I brought some of it on myself.” She absently fingered the plain silver bracelet on her wrist after discarding the serviette and Darcy sighed. 

She had never been in a team, a real team, with anyone besides Jane, and she and Jane were too smart and too different to hold grudges against each other when they misunderstood or annoyed each other. But she had seen other teams struggling, and she knew secondhand from Erik, who knew firsthand, how the Avengers had struggled when they had come together. 

“Look, if you’re a team, then forgiveness has to come at some point, right? I mean, bygones and all,” she assured her, and Skye nodded slowly. Her expression said she already knew this. 

“It sucks, but all I can do is keep fighting the fight… And wait.” 

“But sometimes that’s all there is, right?” Darcy asked, trying to sound comforting and not douchey and know-it-all. “Waiting, I mean.” She thought of Jane and Thor, and grimaced. She most definitely did not think of- 

“So your guy might be the same way?” Skye offered, and again, Darcy matched her drink-for-gulping-drink. 

She felt a flash of annoyance, spearing through the otherwise pleasant haze in her head. Of course it wasn’t the same thing, she wanted to say, but her own advice was like staring at a mirror, and she couldn’t take it back. Not for Skye’s sake. 

“Yeah,” she finally answered, feeling lame. 

Skye only smiled in understanding and clinked their glasses again. 

With a sigh, Darcy finished her beer. Was this her second? Or third? Another sigh because she couldn’t remember and that sealed the decision that she was nearly done for the night, anyway. She signaled the house for something slightly harder. Skye seconded the order and Darcy grinned, her thoughts of finishing drinking momentarily forgotten. 

“Drink up,” she encouraged her new friend. “Everything’s on me.” Darcy did not share the fact that everything was actually on SHIELD, since they had been funding the whole Greenwich adventure to begin with. But damn if she needed to take advantage of some of the perks of helping to save the world. Nay, the universe. 

“You are super classy,” Skye cheered, an approving smile on her mouth and eyes as her head bobbed. She knew she was a little drunk, though nowhere near Darcy’s level, but she was also a good judge of character, and she knew that Darcy was all right.  

The beanie’d girl had sat and listened for the better part of an hour to Skye’s concerns that no one on the Bus would have put up with for a quarter so long. She had offered helpful advice, reading through the lines with an empathy that Skye hadn’t felt in a while. Coulson was good, but he was also her boss and there were sympathy lines he couldn’t cross. The others tolerated her particular brand of… well, her, especially after her screw up. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to take care of her friends. So she cleared her throat. 

“Listen, I know some people.” At this statement, Darcy lifted her eyes out of her glass long enough to raise an eyebrow. “I mean, you know, I have some connections. I’m not trying to brag or anything, I’m just saying that if you ever need some help or something, here’s my email.” She recorded the public address, one of several, onto a pub napkin and slid it over to Darcy, who lifted it and blinked at it. “If you ever need some help, like… getting information or making parking tickets disappear or something… Let me know.” 

Darcy reared back appreciatively, a low, “Pffffttttt,” escaping her lips. Skye began to miss the serviette’s function. 

“You are sooo much more awesome than I am, Skye,” were the words she finally spoke. The humor was an infectious fog between them and they both relaxed further. 

Between the beer and the atmosphere, Skye found herself affecting a demured expression, “Oh no, no, Darcy. No, I mean, you’re racking up the awesome. Know what I’m sayin’?” 

Darcy laughed and swiped a hand towards her chest excitedly, “It’s like we’re three people!” 

The madness would have grown had not both girls been interrupted a moment later by a firm, “Miss Lewis,” at the door of the bar. 

When Darcy, and in fact the whole pub, hushed, Skye followed suit and glanced over her shoulder to see a rather hunky blond man staring in their direction. The same exit that Ward had utilized over an hour earlier was now the site of a strange palindrome in action. Brown eyes narrowed at the man’s stance, which was not unlike the one Ward affected most of the time. Military? Ex-military? Darcy had never said what it was she did. 

She turned back to her new friend, who looked not the least bit chastised at the newcomer’s scolding tone or worried expression, but instead only sighed, and in her face there was acquiescence and… longing? 

“Now for the nightcap,” the bespectacled young woman announced. “Ha. Night. Cap,” she laughed to herself, and Skye couldn’t follow the joke. Darcy downed her shot of bourbon in one swallow without a wince. Then her pointer fingers began poking at her cheeks in a rough staccato. “Yep,” she affirmed. “Can’t feel a thing. Must be time for leave.” 

Skye was prepared when Darcy leaned into her and said, “That’s my tall, blond and credentialed.” She turned for a better look to see that he was already at the edge of the bar, and his quiet efficiency was really, really like Ward. Damn. Darcy hadn’t been kidding that they were similar. 

Only Darcy had feelings for this guy that went beyond teammate, and Skye could not get a read on his feelings at all. Except he seemed a little annoyed. And kind of frustrated. And not particularly requite-y. 

“Steve, this is Skye. Skye, Steve,” Darcy said as she rearranged a scarf that had been laying in her lap. Whatever feelings Darcy had exposed at the recognition of him were carefully tucked under a veneer of tipsy buzz. 

“Ma’am,” Steve offered, inclining his head. 

Skye’s eyebrows rose at the politeness, and Darcy quickly agreed, “Right!” 

Steve followed with a, “Miss Lewis, we should go,” talk that traveled in a few circles about concern and responsibility and some other people who Skye did not know, who Darcy had not mentioned. Clearly Steve was concerned, and perhaps a little angry, but Darcy might as well have been teflon for all that the concern stuck to her. Or maybe she was just really drunk. 

All the same, she complied and tucked the email-laden napkin into her coat pocket before turning to Skye and saying, “I was totally going to cheer you up with Disney movies.” 

Skye laughed because it sounded like an awesome idea and, really, she could have really gone for Beauty and the Beast. Seriously. The thought of a stranger doing something so friendly and so… comfortable, suddenly welled emotion in her heart, and before she could stop herself, she put a hand on Darcy’s elbow. 

Darcy’s eyes, too, were watering when she leaned forward and caught Skye in a hug that was completely reciprocated. Despite their easy words and careful demeanors until now, it really did feel like she was saying goodbye to a friend. 

“Thank you, Darcy,” she breathed, wishing that she could do something more for her. “Here let’s get a quick selfie.” Before Steve could object, the girls had arranged themselves cheek-to-cheek, and Skye’s cell captured the moment. “Damn,” she grumbled a moment later. “I think I forgot not to do duckface.” 

“Ha!” Darcy crowed, tilting her head back with liquid-encouraged mirth. “You look awesome, babe. Email that to me.” She nodded, stepping around Skye, who did not remind her that Darcy had not shared her contact info. She didn’t need to. “Also, remember to drop the bill on three-seventeen, kay? The tete-a-tete’s on meeeee,” and Skye agreed, even though the exchange made Steve’s face drop into a sort of disappointed surprise. 

Before they departed, Darcy leaned in and whispered, “Try the quarter trick on the way out.” She nodded as she pulled away and then looped her arm through Steve’s as they headed toward the door, Darcy’s bill apparently settled. 

Skye didn’t have a quarter, but she did have two euros in her pocket that she quickly liberated and flicked toward the pair before they could escape. Her aim was spot on, and the coin bounced off of Steve’s backside and almost all the way back to the bar. He stilled, and she turned back to her drink, unwilling to be found out. There was at least one clear reason to appreciate the man. 

By the time Fitzsimmons appeared to collect her, and neither of them were looking very awake but at least Jemma managed a smile, she had had a free night of booze and a conversation that managed to lighten her heart a bit. 

Fitz was grumbling as he looped an arm beneath her shoulders, “…makes you think ‘wot the hail’ and of course it has to be Ireland. It’s always Ireland- won’t be returning to this island for quite some time if I have any say about it.” 

“But Irish beer is good,” Skye challenged him, and at her easy words, his rant stopped. He was always so polite that way. “And I made a new friend, so that kind of makes this trip worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a prequel to a story that I will eventually be writing, but it’s also a fulfillment of wanting to have a meet up between Darcy Lewis and Skye ever since AOS episode 1. After AOS's "The Well” the setup was too perfect to not.
> 
> I think Skye occupies that position that most fans wanted for Darcy- knee deep in SHIELD’s business while not really being SHIELD "material" and rocking it with Coulson and rubbing elbows with the Avengers (well, sort of on that part. That’s what fic is for!) I also believe these two awesome ladies would be absolute buds, similar enough to agree on people and how to treat them and care for them, but different enough to keep their friendship interesting. But I could go on all day!
> 
> For the record, I don’t ship Skye and Ward. I can see why people would gravitate toward their dynamic but I think I get more of a brother-sister feel from them. We'll see! I can see Darcy getting the wrong vibe, especially with beer glasses on.
> 
> I hope you will forgive any spelling/grammatical errors. I thoroughly edited, but you know how things go :)


End file.
